Moderator

<p>It is difficult, if not impossible to fully counter Altaria with a single Pokemon. Most importantly, it is hard to resist Altaria's STAB Dragon moves, as NU sees a significant shortage of Steel-types. Those that are NU easily fall to its Ground-type coverage. This restricts you to purely statistical defenses to switch into Altaria. Fortunately, no superhuman—or, super-Pokemon—stats are necessary to counter Altaria. For the Choice Specs set, dedicated special walls such as Lickilicky, Regice, and even Hypno can easily take a Draco Meteor and recover their health. As for the Dragon Dance sets, physical walls such as Amoonguss, Regirock, and Alomomola has no problem tanking a boosted Outrage and deal with the threat accordingly. Probopass, one of the most common Steel-type of NU, can deal with an Altaria locked into a Dragon-type move for whatever reason. On the other hand, Piloswine has all-around bulk to take a strong hit at full health, and also has Ice Shard to revenge Dragon Dance variants if necessary.</p>

<p>The main difficulty in countering Altaria is that the special and physical sets have totally different counters. In fact, the Choice Specs set uses the counters to the Dragon Dance set, such as Alomomola and Amoonguss, as an opportunity to switch in. The crux step in dealing with Altaria is recognizing Altaria's moveset according to the way the opponent plays it. All of its sets are unique and each set has a characteristic playstyle that can be easily recognized. For example, if your opponent hesitates to switch in Altaria on Alomomola, you can be pretty confident that it is a physical variant. If your opponent switches in on your Tangela, you can be almost certain that it is a special variant. Without great teambuilding and some gutsy plays, it will be hard for your opponent to disguise Altaria's set.</p>

<p>It may be hard to take on Altaria without suffering any losses, but taking down Altaria is not all that difficult. Without a Speed boost, Altaria is outsped by majority of the offensive metagame, and is easily OHKOed by strong physical attackers such as Cinccino and Zangoose. Even with a Speed boost, most Choice Scarf users are still faster than Altaria; Scarf Sawk or Electabuzz has no trouble revenging a boosted Altaria locked into Outrage. Of course, most things with Ice Beam can easily kill even the most specially defensive of all Altaria. Finally, Stealth Rock cuts down on Altaria's lifespan significantly, so wearing it down should not be very difficult with some smart switches.</p>

Hide(Move your mouse to the hide area to reveal the content)Show HideHide Hide

Altaria

[Overview]

• The Neverused Dragon returns again!
• Balanced stats, nothing special
• DM; Still a Dragon
• A wide variety of supporting moves, like Roar, Heal Bell, Cotton Guard, Perish Song, Roost, etc. and that warrants a defensive set.
• Offensively threatening typing. Too bad it hits like a fur ball without a boost.
• No worries! It can either boost itself or carry a Choice item for destruction.
• Defensively niche typing. Switches into Grassers, and other resisted attacks. Only gripe: WHY U SR WEAK.
• Metagame shift abandons Fire-types and SD Samurott. Grim day for Altaria use.
• Also, fast physical attackers rule the world now. Altaria has no business up against them.
• I’ve never seen a fur ball hit so hard

• Draco Meteor kills.
• I mean it
• A viable pivot thanks to unique resists and mighty power
• HP Ground hits Probopass + Bastiodon. That’s really all coverage you need
• Dragon Pulse for more reliable hits, Fire Blast is not as useful.
• Rest allows it to live on vs. slower / defensive teams and continue nuking off its members. Natural Cure removes sleep upon switch, so it can also help Altaria pivot around resisted moves.

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

• EV Spread: outspeeds Torterra.
• Or: 64 speed EVs to outspeed adamant Torterra + modest Ludicolo.
• Or: Max speed. Using Cloud Nine with Max speed can revenge weather sweepers really easily. Rest is useless then, so Fire Blast keeps the fourth slot.
• Great teammates: SD Samurott for setting up on special walls and Ice-type attacks etc.
• Torterra can switch in on defensive replies to Altaria and smash them.
• What else?
• LO with Roost > Rest? Loses power for
• It’s kind of slow so pair it with some faster attackers on an offensive team.
• It punishes Grassers like Tangela and Amoonguss. Think physical attackers like Cinccino in order to U turn into them and get more hits in. Golurk likes Tangela gone, can switch into Probo if you predict wrong
• Wartortle can technically spin… but it sucks.

• Great defensive typing, albeit with a SR weakness
• Acceptable specially defensive stats, but a lot of resistances to common special attacking types
• Without HP Ice, some great attackers like Exeggutor, Musharna, whatever are stuffed.
• Your choice of Roar or Perish song for your pHazing needs. Stuff that everybody knows: both removes setup sweepers, but Roar is more proactive. P-song is better against last mon boosters, especially Duosion, which you cannot even Toxic stall.
• Heal Bell is just a general support move, removes status effects and stuff. Great if you have a stall member with Rest.
• Dragon Pulse is a bit stronger than Dragon Claw, just an attacking move to not be taunt bait and deal damage when necessary.

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

• Leftovers and the 252 / 252 spread, typical stuff.
• COTTON GUARD deserves a mention (but don’t use with perish song rofl)
• Toxic too maybe, but Altaria’s got niche support moves and if you’re using defensive altaria you might as well use them
• Instead of pHazing you got the true-blue haze but it kind of sucks, as it can’t exactly kill last-mon setup users like Perish Song, nor does it have the immediacy of Roar.
• Physically not very strong. Rock-type attacks and Ice-type attacks are dangerous.
• Rock moves are often seen with EQ (and with no STAB). Physical walls like Tangela are your best bet. Shared Ice weakness, though
• Really appreciates Spikes support because it Roars and pHazes stuff out. Garbodor, Omanyte, w/e.
• Appreciates spin support especially so because it's a defensive set, meaning the battle will be drawn out and you'll have more switches. Without Rapid Spin you'll lose a lot of HP in the long run. Cryo

• Great coverage in 2 high Base Power moves. Deserves a DD set!
• Weakest DD’er in the tier. What a shame
• Faster speed makes up for it though. The fastest dragon that can dance!
• Also, unlike those preevos, Altaria has acceptable bulk even without Eviolite, so it can carry Life Orb which makes up for its offensive woes. That needs to go first slash along with Outrage.
• EQ gets perfect coverage with Dragon. Other than Bronzor, of course.
• It really has no need for any other attacking moves so Roost comes in handy for more setup stuff.
• Dragon Claw, along with Lefties gives it some flexibility / bulk. Both together is way too weak, though.

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

• Dragon Claw / Outrage without Roost might be viable because you’ll rarely use roost
• You really just need 1 or 2 dds to go sweep, but stuff like Tangela, Regirock, etc. are a pain.
• Who beats Tangela and / or Regirock?
• Emboar? Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh
• Amoonguss and stuff like that too, but shared Ice weakness.
• Really appreciates Spikes support because it wishes it were stronger. Garbodor, Omanyte. Garbodor can spike up vs. Tangela.
• A lot harder to check in theory, but in practice, SR weakness, (still) low power, and so-so speed does not help.
• Best set against fast teams that try to revenge Altaria with non scarfers.

• Tries to juggle the specially defensive duty with the dragon dancer.
• Weakest offensive set from the weakest dragon dancer of the tier. Enough said.
• Dragon Dance / Dragon Claw is the bread & butter of this set
• Roost recovers HP and is 100% necessary on this set because it needs to stack a couple of DD’s if you want to be remotely threatening.
• EQ gets perfect coverage with Dragon. Other than Bronzor, of course.
• Instead of EQ, Heal Bell provides team support and allows Altaria to heal status without having to switch out and undo its hard work.
• Cotton guard is notable for buffing its defense and making it a great overall tank.

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

• EV spread: the speed evs allow it to outpace adamant scarf sawk after TWO boosts.
• Well to be fair it doesn’t sound like all that usable, but the next probable benchmark is ouspeeding scarf rotoms, which needs 112 EVs in speed.
• This leads to significant loss in special bulk, so think wisely.
• Who beats Tangela and / or Regirock? You need some serious help busting through walls.
• CB Emboar does that for you. OK type synergy, too.
• Or, you could fit this altaria in an otherwise defensive team with typical stall members, but with 1 setup sweeper so that you can win with your own offense.
• Appreciates spin support especially so because it's a defensive set, meaning the battle will be drawn out and you'll have more switches. Without Rapid Spin you'll lose a lot of HP in the long run. Cryo
• Really appreciates Spikes support because it REALLY REALLY REALLY wishes it were stronger. Garbodor, Omanyte. Garbodor can spike up vs. Tangela.

[Other Options]

• Cotton Guard
• Special LO set with roost? I really think the special set that goes along the lines of LO Draco Meteor + Power Swap is a pretty good gimmick
• Fire Blast on the offensive DD set to roast Tangela.
• Its viable offensive moves are limited. Not because its movepool sucks or anything, but mostly because it doesn’t need any other attacking move other than Dragon STAB, EQ, and Flamethrower / Fire Blast.
• I didn’t mention Cloud Nine much… it’s good vs. sun, but Altaria loses against rain anyways.
• Band instead of specs, but the lock in effect kind of sucks
• what else….?

[Checks and Counters]

• It’s hard to resist Altaria’s attacks. Those darn dragons.
• That leaves you with statistical defenses if you want any defensive replies to Altaria.
• Fortunately, you don't need superhuman (or super-Pokemon) defensive stats to counter Altaria.
• The difficulty is that Specs and DD set has totally different counters. Also, some counters to DD set like Tangela and Amoonguss is actually countered by Specs variant…
• Tangela, Regirock, Piloswine etc. for DD so anything with high defense.
• Lickilicky, Hypno, Probopass, etc. for Specs and anything with high special defense.
• Typical disadvantage vs. Ice and stuff

Altaria is really weak. Mention in the offensive DD section that you the only thing Altaria really has over other Dragon Dance users is Earthquake, Roost, and a dual typing which gives it more set-up opportunities. It's still weak without many boosts, however, and as such, is pretty easy to counter with anything that has a good defense stat and can hit Altaria hard back (mention that in checks and counters).

In the Choice Specs set AC, mention Ice Beam. Ice Beam isn't for anything in particular but it can be useful in certain situations such as when the opponent has both a Dragon and a Grass-type still alive and you want to hit both of them hard.

Concurring this is a good skeleton. On Ice Beam, I can see what DTC is saying, but I still think Dragon Pulse does that job better in almost every situation. Also, HP Ground is a lot more useful than Fire Blast, which in reality hits very little. Apart from Metang and lolBronzor, there are random Wormadam-S out there, as well as hitting Cryogonal harder than anything else. Not to mention SHEDINJA, who otherwise walls it (pointless I know, but still). Move HP Ground to the second slot, and then slash Dragon Pulse with either Rest or Fire Blast, it does come in handy occaisionally (more so than Ice Beam).

Moderator

Yeah only real reason why Fire Blast is on top of HP Ground is because Probopass + Bastiodon usage is about 10% (a good estimate considering no one would use them on the same team), while Cryogonal on its own gathers 8.8% usage. Add Vileplume / Amoonguss usage to that (that's another 9% usage, with the same assumption because they occupy the same niche) and I'd say Fire Blast is just as important, if not more, than HP Ground. If nothing, Fire Blast gives it some super effective coverage and stuff.

Though, if I were to squeeze Dragon Pulse on the set I'd probably use it over Fire Blast, too, because Rest is kinda useful and you never wanna get fully walled by Probopass.

Well I made some calcs to back them up but instead of putting them here I might as well just put it in the OP.

Cryogonal is getting the boot to RU really soon, probably before this analysis is finished. So I don't think it should factor into our reasoning for keeping Fire Blast. Hitting the Grass types harder is still handy though, so it should at least be slashed with Dragon Pulse.

NU Co-Leader

The only thing I would like to suggest is that the support set be moved above the offensive DD. The defensive set is very solid in this meta(and will be even more so if Cryo leaves) but the Offensive DD set really has a hard time right now. It loses to a lot of Pokemon in the top 30, and requires a lot of team support to do anything. While the support set is capable of walling prominent threats like Samurott with Altaria's nice defensive typing.

Of course this is only my opinion so if the official QC people could weigh in I'd appreciate it.

Is the bulk on the Specs set for anything in particular? Because if not I think outrunning Modest Ludicolo would be a much better use of the Evs .I know you mentioned it but I think it would be better as the primary spread. Altaria still checks Samurott even with a smaller amount of HP investment and this way it can smack Modest Ludicolo with Draco Meteor(not assuming RD ofc). Thats just my personal opinion.

Don't leave out the LO set. That set is actually really dangerous and takes a slightly more balanced approach than specs. Only changes to the current set on site would be to put dragon fang>LO and haze>power swap. Maybe also mention that it is one of the very few emboar counters in the tier (until it starts running HP ice ._.)

The LO Power Swap is only present in the RU analysis, and in all honesty its not a great set in NU. And what Dragon Fang Haze Altaria? Seems like a bad gimmick to me. I do agree the ability of the defensive sets to switch into Emboar's STAB moves is useful, but it still has to be wary of Head Smash. The sets Amarillo has included are sufficient and cover the use Altaria gets in NU.

Moderator

The Power Swap set is a lot more viable in RU because there's a notable NP user (Cofag) running rampant, and it's hard to stop it without having to rely on Drapion or something like that. In NU, the special boosting move of choice is Calm Mind, not Nasty Plot. Without a common NP booster to steal boosts off of, I feel that the Power Swap set loses a whole dimension of play, and is purely restricted to defensive de-buff of the opponent (that may or may not be specially offensive). Also, more steel-types in RU gives Altaria an incentive to not be Choice-locked. However, none of that applies to NU: I believe Specs is the superior set in a lot of ways, and a primary mention of such set in OO is enough.

The sets are still fine imo, just go through and remove all the mentions of Quagsire, Cryogonal, Magmortar (all of which are huge one way or another for Altaria). Make it clear its not such a good Samurott check anymore, what with Ice Beam becoming really popular. Being a good switch in for Amoonguss should be emphasised, as should its inability to take on the plethora of dangerous new offensive powerhouses (Cinccino, Zangoose)
QC Approve 1/3

Yeah, Altaria's not really changed that much, and I agree with Django's changes.

However, I think there should be some discussion of Life Orb in the main set's AC. While it's not as powerful as Specs, it really facilitates better use of Hidden Power Ground and Rest. For instance, you throw out a Dragon Pulse as Probopass switches in, and then you cripple it with Hidden Power Ground as it Thunder Waves you or something. Then you can Draco Meteor something else if you can take an attack.

Likewise, you can use Draco Meteor on something and then use Rest or Roost as the opponent expects you to switch out, which is really helpful if they bring something like Amoonguss in after Draco Meteor to Spore a switchin. On the subject of Rest vs Roost I think the former is better when you're using Draco Meteor and the latter is better when you're not, so both merit discussion.

Any recoil damage gets healed off by Rest anyways, so I think it's worth at least a mention for the extra degree of control it gives you. Other than that...

I've been using Specs Altaria a lot lately and I've found that Dragon Pulse is more useful than Fire Blast. Fire Blast really doesn't hit anything and Dragon Pulse is useful when you need to use a move you can easily spam.

In the AC of Specs, I think that you should mention Cloud Nine and max Speed. With that, you can easily outrun weather boosters such as Seismitoad, Exeggutor, Victreebell and Ludicolo, and smash them with Draco Meteor/Fire Blast, should your team have trouble with them. Obviously Rest has no merit on that set, so you'd use all 4 offensive moves.

In the AC of Specs, I think that you should mention Cloud Nine and max Speed. With that, you can easily outrun weather boosters such as Seismitoad, Exeggutor, Victreebell and Ludicolo, and smash them with Draco Meteor/Fire Blast, should your team have trouble with them. Obviously Rest has no merit on that set, so you'd use all 4 offensive moves.